


Smoke and Shadows

by thebasement_archivist



Category: The X-Files
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-03-15
Updated: 2001-03-15
Packaged: 2018-11-20 15:07:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11337960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebasement_archivist/pseuds/thebasement_archivist
Summary: And all paths are drowned deep in shadow.





	Smoke and Shadows

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Basement](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Basement), which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Basement's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thebasement/profile).

 

Smoke and Shadows By Sssenza

Title: Smoke and Shadows  
Author: Sssenza  
Fandom: X-files  
Pairing: M/K  
Rating: NC17 for m/m sexual activity.  
Disclaimer: No infringement intended, these characters do not belong to me, yadda yadda.  
Archive: DitB, anywhere else, please ask.  
Feedback: Do you want to make me beg? Compliments or criticisms, I don't care, send 'em to   
Summary: And all paths are drowned deep in shadow.

* * *

Smoke and Shadows  
By Sssenza

*~`*`~*`~*`~*`~*`~*~`*`~*`~*`~*`~*`~  
"...And in your darkest hour  
My whole secrets flamed  
We can watch the world devoured in his game  
Time has topped before us  
The sky can not ignore us  
No one can separate us  
For we are all that is left  
The echo bounces off me  
The shadow lies beside me..."

\--'The End is the Beginning is the End' by Smashing Pumpkins  
*~`*`~*`~*`~*`~*`~*~`*`~*`~*`~*`~*`~

Watching him has become a full-time job, these days.

It's arrogant of me to hold myself up as his guardian angel, I know, but *someone* has to do it--might as well be me, his very own personal devil. Who else could know all of his weaknesses so intimately, all of his fears, all of his irrational obsessions, and still idolize him? Not Scully, that much is certain. She will never see him in quite the same light as I. He protects her from his flaws as he protects her from everything...and as I protect him, driven by this relentless, almost fetishistic preoccupation that passes for loyalty. It's a loyalty that has very little to do with virtue or trust, however, and everything to do with truth.

It's a loyalty that'll get me killed one day--or more likely, one night. A night very like this one, I suspect, the air dense with dread, the smoke-heavy sky almost unnaturally dark. It's the kind of blackness you feel your way through, orienting by scent and sound and the odd half-sensed subliminal cue. Even the stars are shrouded in smoke, tonight, and the moon is glacial and distant.

The smoke is everywhere, blue-gray and putrid, and I almost fail to see him for the haze, but, strangely, it seems to dissipate as I draw nearer to him, and the stench all but fades away. He is surrounded by it without actually being touched, but I'm not fooled. He is not safe here. The shadows loom up all around him, heedless of the light that follows at his side. It's her; the red-gold gleam of her that is never absent, even when she is not with him--as she isn't tonight. How very noble of him...to absorb the brunt of the danger in her stead. But he doesn't have a monopoly on self-sacrifice, not by any means. At least he has her assurance, a quiet steadiness that he wears about him like a borrowed coat, like a knight bearing his lady's token.

*I* have nothing of *him*.

But I never really expected to get roses--or anything else, for that matter (one kiss, yes, but that I stole). Just him, alive, for one more day. I can make do with that. But first I have to see to it that he *does* live, and the night is far from over.

He doesn't even know the danger he's in. Doesn't have a fucking clue, or perhaps he knows but he doesn't care, can't waste a single atom of that amazing mind on his own peril. I watch him staring up at this burning wreck of a building through binoculars and I can almost taste his passion, fine and raw and overwhelming. A thing so pure as this should have eaten him away by now, burned him down to just the base elements, leaving nothing non-essential, nothing human. But he lives with that fire and, incredibly, isn't consumed, only scorched a bit around the edges. Those cinders he has for eyes are the only evidence of his heat.

And I'm so absorbed with the sight of him that I forget to be quiet, and he hears me even over the roar of the flames and the clamor of new explosions going off every few minutes, set off by the blaze. I don't know what he hears--my breathing, maybe, or the pounding of my heart--but he turns, lowering the binoculars, and his eyes pick me out regardless of the broken streetlamp and the cloying darkness.

His face goes instantly hard and in a moment his gun is out; he remembers me, how touching. But he doesn't seem to remember what the Sig is for, because in another moment he's come around from behind his car and his hands are on me, inexorable, hauling me back to the silver Taurus and slamming me up against it. His body crushes me into the doorframe, jarring my elbow so hard I'm surprised it doesn't break the glass, and the gun is prodding me just beneath the ribs. It's all so amazing I could scream.

But I don't, probably because the wind has been knocked out of me and any attempt at vocalization would only worsen this terrible tightness around my chest.

He gives me a few moments to catch my breath before clicking off the safety. Suddenly I'm utterly, unbelievably hard.

He doesn't seem to notice.

"Krycek. Fancy meeting you here," Mulder says, as breathless as I, his voice gone soft with fury.

I struggle half-heartedly in his grasp. "I know, I know--wh-what's a nice boy like me doing in--in a place like this, right?" I manage between gasps. The tightness in my chest hasn't receded, just descended so that it's hovering low and bitter in my belly, right where his hip is grinding into me. I can feel the bones of his pelvis, fragile and sharp as the skeleton of a bird--he's too thin, I think, and then the thought twists my mouth into a senseless grin. Maternal instinct? Now?

He sees the grin; he thinks I'm laughing at him. This time when he slams me backwards the force of it lifts me onto the balls of my feet, and I'm forced to cling to him with my good arm just to keep my balance. The false one strikes the car's metal chassis with a dull-sounding thud.

Ignoring it, he jerks my head back by the hair. It's long enough, now, that he can do that, and I'm not sure whether I regret it or not. "Start talking, Krycek," he demands. "What are you doing here?" His face is only inches from mine, I can smell him, his body, his breath...he smells clean, like shampoo and spearmint and the faint second-hand aroma of White Shoulders, which I don't fault him for because I've seen the way he looks at Scully, and there is no lust in it. She is too virtuous for that. Saint Scully the Stainless.

"Looking out for your sorry ass, actually," I grit, unable to come up with a suitable lie. It doesn't really matter. He won't believe me anyway.

"I'm a big boy. I can take care of myself," he says coolly, shoving me again. If I didn't know better, I'd think he was trying to optimize on the physical contact.

"Look, playing double-agent is tough enough as it is without you going and getting yourself killed. What would I do then--break into *Scully's* apartment?"

He nearly grins at that in spite of himself, and returns wryly, "You could try Skinner's. He gets this look in his eye whenever your name comes up...I think he misses you."

An involuntary shudder passes through me at the thought. "No thanks. That last visit did wonders for my love of balconies."

Just then another explosion takes out the left wing of the building, and he sobers, glancing over my shoulder at the heightening flames. "If you want to help me, Krycek, you can start by telling me what this building was used for, and by whom."

In his anxiousness he's loosened his grip on the gun; I can feel it flagging against my left side. If I twisted away I could easily grab it out of his hand and be out of here, leaving him to his fate.

But instead I arch into him fractionally, tilting my head back, neck exposed and vulnerable. That's something he should be able to understand: surrender, total, unspoken, physical. It's my only weapon against him, and I use it well. Mulder has a weakness for weakness--losing my arm is probably the best move I've ever made toward gaining his trust.

"Don't you ever get tired of asking questions, Mulder?" I ask quietly. "You'll think I'm lying no matter what I say. Besides, that's not what you really want to ask me, is it? After all our... history together?"

He stiffens, the specter of his father thrown down between us once again, divisive as ever. Couldn't leave it alone, could you, Alex? But that little bit of trivia would have reared its ugly head sooner or later--I'm only trying to save us some time.

But, for once, he doesn't take the bait. "Answer me, Krycek." And abruptly, I'm out of weapons.

"You shouldn't be here, Mulder," I begin. It sounds like a plea, but I'm not too proud to beg. "Believe me, it's not worth it." Yet even as I say the words he is already dismissing them. There is no unimportant information, for him; he truly believes the truth will set him free. He doesn't understand that in some situations ignorance is more than bliss--it is life.

"What's in there, Krycek?" he presses, stirred now, his curiosity aroused. His voice is strained and needy, desperate for answers. "Why did they blow up this building? *What's in there?*"

I shake my head. "The men who destroyed this building are long gone, and any evidence of the work they were doing here is gone by now."

I can see by his eyes that he doesn't want to believe me, but he's not about to go rushing into the flaming building. I know that fear of his well, that vulnerability. It's one of his most endearing qualities.

"You're too late." It almost hurts me to say it. I know how badly he wanted this to be the one, the lead that broke the conspiracy open, that gave him his ultimate, longed-for, conclusive proof. As much for himself as for her, because as much as he wants to believe, even he needs something tangible to put his hands on once in awhile.

"The fire's almost burnt out," I continue, "there's nothing left. Nothing that could help you." I say it gently, as though the sound of my voice itself could shatter him, and god, *god*, the way he's looking at me, maybe it has.

He shakes his head, a childlike gesture of denial, lips defiantly mouthing No, no. But there is little need for persuasion. With two or three final explosions the building crumbles behind me like a giant falling to its knees, the whole violent spectacle reflected for me in his eyes, and for an instant we are forced to cling to each other while the earth shudders under our feet.

My head is pulled to his chest as though he were trying to protect me, but I don't mind the role reversal. We huddle into our own private darkness, sheltered from flying rubble by his car, and after a time the only sound I can hear is the rush of blood in my own ears, incredulous...

And then the moment is gone, and he pulls back from the embrace, uncertainty showing in his eyes for the first time.

I let my arm slip reluctantly from around his waist, but we are still pressed together against the side of his car, and he shows no signs of moving. He is so still I have to peer at him for a good ten seconds to be sure he is even breathing. Then, reassured, I glance up at his face--and instantly regret it.

I was wrong. His eyes aren't cinders--they're open wounds.

Finally, mercifully, he turns his face away. Stands there staring up at the sky for an interminable period of time, a boundless, drawn-out interval in which my throat becomes cracked and dry and a sourceless fear rises over me, coursing up my spine, coiling itself at the base of my skull.

He's not safe.

I've been lax. I've been standing here rubbing up against him, heedless of the danger, and now it may be too late; we've *got* to get out of here. I have to get him out of here.

Gently, I begin to extricate myself from this not-altogether-unpleasant little niche between Mulder's too-lean stomach and the driver's-side window. I don't dare push, not now. I've never seen him like this. He's still staring at the sky, hazel eyes brimming over with nothingness. Empty.

"Mulder, what are you looking at?" I ask carefully.

He shakes his head, mute.

"There's nothing up there, Mulder. Just stars, and you can't even see them, they're clouded over."

Silence. A wind rises up out of nowhere and ruffles his hair.

"Smoke," he says at last.

"What?"

"Smoke, not clouds."

A pause. "Ah."

The moon is nothing but a faint brightness above the horizon, wreathed in haze. The air is stifling and hot.

"We should leave," I suggest, easing away from him. He gives no sign of hearing me and so I take him by the arm and lead him around to the passenger side, his trench coat fluttering behind us.

And that's when the first shot rings out.

Some instinct moves me to throw my body across his a fraction of a second before the bullet comes ripping through the steaming air, and it grazes my shoulder instead, hurtling on past to shatter the window of his Taurus. Shards of glass burst out toward me, planting themselves in my chest, splintering the air, scoring the left side of my face. I scarcely feel it.

A second bullet buries itself just above the stump, where the strap holds the prosthetic to my body. This one is worse, a blue-white explosion of icy heat. I grin savagely, as much from the pain as from the bitter humor of the situation. It can't do much more harm, there, but all the same my left side is now slick with blood under the leather jacket.

The third bullet takes out the rear tire. Shit. How are we going to get out of here without the car?

Mulder comes alive against me, at last some vestige of survival instinct kicking in, his gun cocked and ready in his hand. But even with my one arm I'm faster than he is, and I've already fired off a well-placed shot. A rifle clatters to the ground some fifty feet off.

There will no doubt be more of them, and the gunshots will have alerted them to our presence now. There's only one possibility left to us. I grab his arm, pulling him toward the building and its flames, and he follows easily, shielding his eyes against the smoke and the terrible brightness.

Then for a moment he stiffens, holding back. "You're bleeding," he states flatly, touching my ribs where the blood has soaked through the gray shirt I'm wearing. Touching my face. He glances up at my shoulder and sees the bullet hole in the leather. "You've been hit," he realizes.

Idiot. Irritation rises up in me like arousal, but I yank him onward without pausing to savor the brush of his fingers on my cheek.

Behind the building we duck into a hulking metal structure that's been left largely untouched by the flames, a featureless gray cube that looks like some kind of shed--a storage house, one might think, to look at it. But I know better. Inside, the back wall slides away under our combined effort and we slip down into the darkness behind it breathing hard, trembling with exertion.

And then we turn and shove the wall back into place. It's like moving pure lead. Only the adrenaline singing through my veins, and his, gives us the strength to manage a job more suited to three or four *able-bodied* men our size.

The bullet-wounds are beginning to hurt now, a slow acid burning that eats at me from inside.

"Come on," I whisper, because the blackness is too constricting for anything louder; it would ricochet off these walls like gunfire, reverberating in the hollow space between us until it drowned out the sound of his breathing, and that sound is my only anchor here.

He lets me take his hand and I lead him blindly through the twisting passages, tracking by feel alone, a rat in its alley. I don't dare use a light, not until we reach the far end. Out here the walls are too reflective, too direct, and even the minute red glow of a cigarette can be detected yards away.

His hand is slack in mine, relaxed, but I can feel the taut weight of him behind it, and the lean lanky body. "Alex, where are we going?" he murmurs. He's calling me Alex now; it's rather alarming. At least the empty stare is gone.

"Shh. You'll see," I reply in undertone. Pausing at a junction of corridors. Right, isn't it? I'm sure it's a right turn here. Or was that the last one? Oh God. I can't have lost track. My heart starts beating faster.

He comes up behind me silently, still holding my hand, a whisper of air at my back. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," I say, with a remarkable imitation of composure. "I'm thinking." The panic is starting to edge into my voice, but I hold it back staunchly.

He shakes his head in the dark; I can feel it. I can feel every movement he makes, every twitch of his muscles, I can feel his heart beating behind me, and the pulse in his wrist under my fingers.

And then--and then...

And then it happens, as far as I can tell: that's when it starts. Or perhaps it started years ago, when we met as fellow agents and he refused to shake my hand and I fell in love.

His breath on the back of my neck. His mouth...

I gasp, staggered. "Mulder...!"

He drops my hand and buries his face in my hair, one arm coming around to circle my waist.

My voice comes out a hoarse whisper. "God...What are you doing, Mulder? What are you *doing*?" I've never heard myself sound so weak, so needy. I must be crazy, or he is, or both; all I know is that if he lets go of me my knees will surely collapse under my weight.

And then he draws away and I am still standing, my heart machine-gunning in my chest like it's about to rip out through my rib cage. I don't know who he is anymore. I don't know who *I* am--

I swallow and take his hand again, leading him firmly through the darkness to the right, and he follows.

At times there are sounds of confusion very far above us, engines and gunfire and later, sirens. But here the walls cocoon us, dampening the sound, and nothing is quite so real compared to his hand in mine, the sweat of his palm, the fine tendons under the skin.

When at last we come to the end there is no need to carry a flashlight; the yellow-gold glow of the emergency lights has crept up on us like sunrise, glinting off his hair, his skin, striking sparks into his eyes. There's a cot in the corner of the little alcove, a first-aid kit and dried food packets in the cupboards lining the walls. A bathroom, even, and all utilities pre-paid for the next five years. I made sure of that myself, with a few computer tricks I've picked up over the years.

I sit on the edge of the cot and strip off the ruined leather jacket, suffering a pang of regret. I loved that jacket; it fit me like a second skin. Now I'm going to have to break in a new one.

After a few moments Mulder sits cross-legged on the floor, agile as a teenager, and watches me clean and dress my wounds. He's looking at me strangely, like I'm some kind of extra-terrestrial. It unsettles me, that look. His eyes almost shine in the darkness, effulgent and flecked with gold.

"What?" I ask distractedly.

He shakes his head, lower lip curving slightly into the shadow of a smile. "For a minute there you looked like *him*."

"Who?" Jeez, I sound so inane. 'What? Who?'

"'Agent Alex Krycek'," he says, grimacing slightly. Sardonic little half-smile. "You know, that young guy I worked with a while back."

I shoot a glance at him, but there's no real venom in his expression. "I'm not so young," I tell him, wiping a bloody hand on the leg of my jeans.

He nods seriously, not looking away. "Yeah. I suppose not."

I have to drop my eyes then, unnerved by the unexpected warmth of his gaze, and I busy myself with the bandages, fumbling them one-handedly. It irks me to appear so awkward in front of him. This isn't me, I want to explain. I'm not really a cripple. Someone made a mistake; I was never supposed to lose my arm. That wasn't part of the plan.

And when he moves to sit beside me on the bed I start to draw away almost instinctively, defending myself from the pity that will inevitably come with his kindness--but his eyes are unbearably soft, and there is no condescension in them.

He reaches across and takes the bandage from me. Turns my body very gently toward him and unstraps the prosthetic before I even know what he's doing. Binds up my wounds like some kind of goddamn Florence Nightingale.

"Thanks," I say roughly when he's done. "You didn't have to do that."

"I know," he says, shrugging easily, the shadow of a smile curving his lips. And comes to kneel before me, slowly, demurely almost, his eyes never leaving mine.

I pull back, alarmed. "Mulder--"

It's too late. He's leaning in, fingers working at my zipper, quick hands, beautiful hands. My breath is caught somewhere in the hollow of my chest, frozen, but his fingers stroke the heat back into me, skimming the line of my boxers, sliding down and down. When he takes hold of my cock, that first time, it's almost more than I can bear. A sob wrenches out of me, a ragged terrified gasp. My lips try to form his name, but can produce only moans.

And then his mouth--god! his mouth is on me, I'm dying, I am dying, I have never been so alive.

"Fox!" I cry out, amazed, floored. He lets me say it. He gathers me in and laps me to hardness with his tongue, ignites the twisting fire in my groin, mouthing me toward blue-hot ecstasy.

I'm babbling now, incoherent fragments of Russian and English and German. All the most profane words I ever learned, I use them now, because that mouth deserves profanity, and the way he's sucking my cock has got to be some erotic form of blasphemy itself.

"Mulder," I say desperately as the pleasure begins to skyrocket, soaring almost to pain. "*Mulder*." But he doesn't relent. His mouth is merciless around my cock, head bobbing between my legs and I reach down and twine my fingers in the soft dark hair, my own head falling back in perfect excruciating rapture, tears coursing down my cheeks. His name is the only thing I know, the only thing I can say, and I scream it until there is no more voice left in me, and orgasm is a cresting silver wave that drowns out everything but his mouth.

I collapse backwards on the cot as soon as he releases me, jeans pushed down around my knees, penis softening against my thigh. After a few moments he crawls up beside me and curls his long body around mine, pulling me close.

I can feel him hard against my hip, and I begin to turn in his arms, my hand snaking around to cup him gently. But he shakes his head silently and moves my hand, so I kiss him instead.

A real kiss this time, leisurely and soft, ridiculously tentative at first. My lips barely brush his, our eyes shying away from each other in the low golden light. But he leans in, deepening the kiss, and I slide my tongue between his lips, oh! at last, and suck on his lower lip, biting lightly. My teeth draw blood, and I lick that up, tasting this part of him, too. Tasting myself on his tongue.

He smiles against my mouth.

"What?" I virtually grunt, but I have an excuse for inanity this time. *You* try being coherent after getting blown by Fox Mulder.

He shakes his head, laughing silently. "You taste like...like I always imagined *he'd* taste," he tells me, the grin evident in his voice.

And again, I'm floored. "You--you imagined--?"

His mouth cuts off the question in a brief, scalding kiss. "Shh," he says. "Get some rest."

And so I do.

And when I fall asleep, I dream of stars, burning naked and blue in a smokeless sky.

                          * * *

19:22 03/04/01


End file.
